Monday, January 26, 2004

For nearly three decades Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" lay partially submerged in the Great Salt Lake. Since 1999, as drought has lowered the water level, this seminal work of early land art — a 1,500-foot coil of black basalt rocks — has slowly emerged from its ever-evaporating context. Now it is completely exposed - as un-jettied as the ex-Aral Sea's un-boats.

Friday, January 23, 2004

face-off

"The Daily Nation released an image of one of the two suicide bombers who tried to assassinate President Musharraf. The force of the blast detached his face from his head and it flew up and fell off the roof of the nearby police station. He was identified as a bomber from the amount of explosive material on the face."Pakistan News PakTribune.Com

why does this image make me think of this?
is it just the obvious comparison between two puzzles - part of this attempt to make sense of the insanity - two anonymous faces lifted out of history as a result of an equally impossible set of random circumstances and placed before us as icons of meaning. it is equally possible that both images are fakes - that what they purport to represent is nothing more or less than a manipulative artifice. but if they really were who they are represented to be, where does that leave us, other than mired, still, in this endless, centuries-old bog of superstitious intolerance, fear, and hatred.

Friday, January 02, 2004

teiotu brothers - debut album

"Danny, Newtown and Teiotu Jnr, three of the Teiotu brothers from Atiu, now residents in Australia have recently released their first album titled 'Mummy and Daddy.'
Danny's twin brother Inaina composed the title song which features as the last number on the album.
The song tells the story about living so far away from their parents."

Thursday, January 01, 2004

for the love of a yak

this glorious old fellow is ap chuni dorji, composer of the song, 'yak legpai lhadar gawo', an hour-long little ditty about the tragic parting between a yak herder and his beloved yak. this song has been the top of the bhutan hit parade for the last fifty years (until they got satellite tv a year or so ago). it is immortalised on the soundtrack of the film being made by the professionally perfect dzongar jamyang khyentse rinpoche, who is, apart from being a film-director, the reincarnation of a 19th-century tibetan saint, and one of himalayan buddhism's most revered lamas. their stories, which read like a vertiginous crossing of a rickety rope bridge spanning the middle ages and now with nothing in between, can be found in the bhutan online newspaper Kuensel Online and in this
TIME Asia article.

"Congratulations Paul! you have an IQ of 131!According to the sorts of questions you got correct, we can tell your Intellectual Type is a Word Warrior.
This means you have exceptional verbal skills. You can easily make sense of complex issues and take an unusually creative approach to solving problems. Your strengths also make you a visionary. Even without trying you're able to come up with lots of new and creative ideas."
this is exactly the sort of ego-boost a clapped-out old miseryguts needs on new year's day. (I'm assuming 131 is sort of ok-ish-to-average, which is as far as I aspire.)
wahay!
utter bullshit, but fun bullshit - try it
yourself - go on - I dare you.

onni was a finnish pig, who lived a short but happy life through most of 2001 before becoming bacon. this is the very sweet, slightly strange, but ultimately unsentimental
Life of Onni, courtesy of helsingin sanomat - the perfect antidote to all that seasonal saccharine disney anthropomorphism.